Literally ignorant commentary on Sinestro Corps

We've been out of town for the past week or so, thus my posts having been even sparser than usual. On the way out, we stopped at a comic book shop. Wasn't going to buy much of anything since our Big Box O' Comics is going to be here sometime this week. But we stopped in, and the twelve-year-old picked up a few of the Runaways books to check out; she likes it. The eight-year-old chose a copy of Amazing Spider-Girl; I think she likes it, though not to the point of wanting to start getting it regularly.

Me? I picked up that Fallen Son: Spider-Man thing, the only one I hadn't ordered (because I'm not a Spider-Man fan, not really). It was all right, certainly not my favorite of the bunch so far. Will reserve final judgment until I've seen the Iron Man issue. Also grabbed the first Ion trade.

I also meant to pick up that Sinestro Corps book. It's the main thing I meant to get.

You know, because everyone on the net has been talking it up and I'm just full of the peer pressure. :)

I didn't, though, because it was sold out. Apparently everywhere.

(I've ordered a copy from my regular subscription service place, so I'm cool.)

You know, I remember seeing it in the previews, and debating with myself as to whether I'd want it, and deciding that, in the end, it didn't look all that good. I don't remember exactly what the preview said but it clearly didn't lure me in.

Now, I tend to some extent to buy comics based on character. Not exclusively, certainly, and I don't run out to get every possible guest shot, but if I see a book in the previews that features a favorite of mine, particularly if that favorite isn't appearing anywhere else regularly, I'll probably get it. So I'm not sure why I didn't add this to my list, since it must have mentioned that Kyle Rayner would be in it (right?), but I didn't.

Of course it won't be here for a while, so I am reading spoilers.

And keeping in mind that I haven't read the book or anything, I can't find myself getting too upset with the development in his storyline.

I've not cared much for Ion, on the whole. It's not that I don't like uber-powerful characters. (Okay, maybe it is. But I don't always dislike them. It's just that it's obviously so hard to write them well, and so often they just aren't. Written well.)

But I don't like Kyle as that sort of character. While he is certainly experienced enough to be an established hero, I really think he is at his best when he retains that link with real-life humanity.

Some characters are wish-fulfillment characters--by which I mean that they are capital-H heroes, they never truly falter. Think of Superman, or Captain America. Even in their respective universes, within their superheroic communities, they're the ideals. It's not the power level that does it, although certainly both Cap and Supes have an unusually high competence level.

Other characters, at heart, really aren't that far from us. Kyle is one of these. And that doesn't mean he isn't heroic, or isn't great. But he's got a lot more of the Everyman in him. He's more relatable.

And there aren't that many characters who do have that "it could happen to anyone" quality. Even among those characters who do start out that way, so often along the road someone decides they need to have a more significant or "meaningful" background, and suddenly

• they're descended from royalty/aliens/elves,
  
• or they're retconned to be an old friend of some major character,
  
• or their random-encounter origin is determined not to be so random after all,
  
• or they're revealed to be the unknowing heir to some superheroic legacy,
  
• or they're revealed to be Destined For Greatness in some way.
  

It's kind of a pet peeve of mine. I like the idea that an ordinary person, unexpectedly presented with a power ring or a freak chemical spill accident, will rise to the challenge and become a real hero. I liked the implication, in Kyle's initial appearance as GL, that it was a right-place-right-time sort of thing.

And, although you can have a random-accident origin, average-Joe-who-got-"lucky" kind of hero who's also a powerhouse (you can't really call a GL anything but a powerhouse), having him be the powerhouse is something else.

So, personally, I'm actually pleased if Kyle is going to be powered down after this whole Parallax thing. I think it's likely to make for better Kyle stories in the long run. I'd rather see dramatic tension resulting from struggling to complete a mission (harder to do when a character can pretty much do anything) than from hitting him with one emotional blow after another.

Of course my vote may change after I've actually read the issue in question. :)